“Oh! ah! yes,” said Sam. And then the boys coming out from beneath the pendent green bunches of grapes which hung thickly from the roof, the old man locked the door up, and seemed to breathe more freely when he had the key safely in his pocket.
“I knew he’d hid them,” said Philip.
“Now, then,” said Harry, “where are they?”
“I’ve a good mind not to tell ee, you young dogs,” said Sam.
“We’ll get in at the windows, then,” said Harry and Philip in a breath.
The old man glanced over his shoulder, and saw how easily the threat could be executed, and then, with a grunt of despair, said—
“Now, if I let ee have ’em, will you promise not to walk in them in the garden, and make holes?”
“Yes, yes,” said the boys, and then Sam led the way to the stoke-hole of the green-house, where, tucked up in the rafters, and rolled tightly up in piece of matting, were the two pairs of stilts.
The boys seized them with delight; and Sam turned to go on with his work; but just as the stilt-stalkers reached the yard, and prepared to mount with their backs to the wall, clatter went the breakfast bell down went the stilts, and away scampered the boys to the breakfast-room window. On the way, however, they met Sam going also to his breakfast, and in doing so he would have to pass the yard, and Harry remembered that they had left the stilts there unprotected; so he and Philip scampered back again, just in time, for the old man could not pass the instruments which poked holes in his gravel-walks, and he was just gathering them up when he heard the boys’ footsteps, and, leaving the stilts on the ground, he shuffled off as hard as he could.
They took the stilts indoors, and into the hall, to place up in a corner, and just as they were inside it struck Harry how nice it would be to walk along the large hall upon them; for the floor was composed of black and white marble in diamonds, so that he could have one stilt on a black diamond and another on a white, and then change about again. So he got his back up in the corner where the macintoshes and great-coats hung, and then put one foot in one stilt, and made a spring to get into the other, but gave his head such a crack against the brass hat pegs, that he came down quicker than he went up, and then rubbed his crown with a very rueful expression of countenance. However, Harry’s was not a nature to be cowed at a slight difficulty; so shifting his position a little, he had another try, and was fairly mounted.